


Hell's Bells

by the_me09



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-13
Updated: 2010-08-13
Packaged: 2018-09-18 02:05:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9360800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_me09/pseuds/the_me09
Summary: Coward visits Blackwood's grave and says his final goodbye.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is some old stuff from livejournal I'm transporting so it won't be lost. Unchanged from original posting.

Coward wanders among the gravestones and overgrown weeds. He looks lost and could pass for a ghost haunting his burial ground. Sometimes he thinks he might be.

He is thin, thinner than he has ever been. His cheekbones stick out just a little too far to be considered attractive anymore, but he hasn’t cared about his looks in months. Skin too pale and eyes too dark, he is a completely different man from the one who stood in Parliament gazing up at his Lord, Lord Blackwood.

A beautiful and imposing monument looms before him. Coward stops in front of the large sandstone slab covering the tomb where his lover, his love, rests in eternal slumber. Sphinxes flank the tomb and he can’t help noticing how dull they are, how dirty.

He kneels by the burial and brushes some debris from it. He’ll be back later, he thinks, with a cloth and a brush to clean and polish, and perhaps even a ladder to clean the name carved in marble. A name he cherished above all others. A name he loved to say, rolling off his tongue with reverence. A name he would have taken, if only he could.

The only bright thing in this dull world of fading blues and grays are cradled in his arm. A bouquet of red and yellow roses, red for true love and yellow for remembrance. Though in the very middle is one rose of white.

Coward had seen it, the most beautiful and pure of all the roses and knew he needed to pluck it. Needed to take the fresh clean rose and expose it to the harsh elements as he had been exposed. He had to lay something pure on the grave. This white rose a sacrifice, like those girls, surrounded by red.

Coward sets his offering on the grave, sits back and crosses his legs. He arranges the roses just so, knowing they will be left undisturbed. He is the only one who visits this grave, possibly the only one to visit this graveyard.

“Henry,” Coward’s voice is musing and feels unnaturally loud in the silence of the dead. “I was wondering today, if there is a hell, and if that’s where you are.”

He fidgets –a habit that always annoyed Henry- and starts tearing up blades of grass, picking them out of the soil and shredding them. He doesn’t even realize he is doing it, his mind focused on the conversation.

“People keep telling me that you were damned from birth. That you’ve gone straight to hell . . . I’d like to believe that’s true.” Coward looks up suddenly, as if startled by his own words. He laughs bitterly, his eyes tearing up. “You may think me callous, but if you’ve gone to heaven I fear I shall never see you again.”

Pushing himself up off the ground, Coward stands and wraps his own arms around himself. He pulls his black overcoat with fur trim tighter. It had been a gift from Henry.

One winter, for no reason, Henry had come home with this coat. He told Coward he was too thin and would certainly catch his death. Henry draped the coat around his shoulders and kissed him. They had made love on it that evening, careful of the fine material.

“The bible says what we did, all those things, are sins, an abomination.” Coward paces, eleven steps from one sphinx to the other. “I don’t believe that.”

“But the bible also says suicide is the most heinous crime. That taking your own life will send you to hell, no redemption possible. I hope that's true.”

Coward shivers in the falling dark, tears making wet lines as they roll down his face.

“I can’t go on like this Henry. Barely existing, after all, suicide is the coward’s way out, isn’t it?” He laughs again, an eerie out of control sound.

“I think the gun will be easiest, and quickest. A noose,” Coward shudders, remembering. “Far too violent and terrible a death.” His is taking big gulps of air now, the tears coming hot and fast. “Knives are too messy, all those altars we had to clean. I never did get the blood off of that waistcoat.”

He stops his pacing and stands directly in front of the grave, a small shivering figure in the heartless night.

“I could just lay here, with the roses. Come morning we’d both be frozen. Though the flowers would remain beautiful I can’t say the same for me.” This time his laugh sounds more like a sob and he puts the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle the sound.

“I’ll do it tonight Henry. So we can be together.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Hell will be better than this if you are there. You will, won’t you? Greet me at the gates of hell.”

He kneels for a moment to caress the hard stone and take a red rose.

“I’ll wear this rose in my lapel. In hell they won’t care if we’re lovers.” Coward tucks the flower safely inside his coat and gives a small hopeful smile. “I will see you tonight.”

He presses a kiss to the cold uncaring slab and whispers. “I love you, Henry.”

Swiftly, Coward turns on his heel and strides out of the graveyard. No longer lost, he knows his purpose and he hurries away to fulfill it.

That night, on the twelfth chime, a shot was fired in Parliament.

Somewhere in the night, a raven cawed.


End file.
